


suspended in gaffa

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Post-Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan, Psychological Horror, References to Classic Who, Simulated reality, Whump, it's just so much mind fuckery that's all it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-12-01 20:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: The day after he loses Amy and Rory, the Doctor wakes up on an unfamiliar planet- the Datasphere. His ship is nowhere to be found, the world he's on seems to be the inside of an enormous computer, and he's the only living thing on it. He's struggling to survive the grief of living without Amy just as hard as he's struggling to figure out and escape the Datasphere, and the computer interface - the only thing he can talk to - has elected to take the form of Jamie McCrimmon, which isn't making anything easier. Plus, there's something hiding in the planet's tunnels...





	suspended in gaffa

**Author's Note:**

> i put a LOT into this fic and have been working at it for a good while. it IS batshit and i don't apologize for that ksjdhflkdj  
while you don't have to have seen classic who necessarily, it does help to get the gravity of the interface being jamie

The Doctor woke up somewhere he didn’t recognize. 

He was lying on the ground - cold, metal - of an unfamiliar and expansive hallway, stretching nearly as far as he could see in both directions and complete with other, smaller corridors spidering off it and branching out to his left and right. The whole place was lit with a sickly green glow coming from nowhere in particular, and the entire walls and ceiling seemed to be made up of these thick bundles of cables, disgusting, cybernetic snakes looping down and around and coalescing to form this hallway. 

He yanked himself to his feet, and Amy’s name was halfway to his lips before he remembered. No use in calling for her or Rory now. Not after New York, and the graveyard. Strange, how things could change so quickly. Yesterday morning, their names were things he could call.

He ran a hand over his chin, looking both ways down the hallway. He did a few small hops, seeing if he could get any information vis-à-vis the gravity. Conclusions were that he was on a planet, and a planet with considerable mass, probably close to that of Earth’s. Weird. This whole thing seemed very satellite-y. But, not a satellite, unless it was a satellite the size of a planet, and that was unlikely. 

He took a few experimental steps down the hallway, trying to see if he could make out an end to it. Of course, he couldn’t. 

He went to the wall and ran his fingertips over one of the bundles of cables. They came away greasy, and stained with a thick black liquid of sorts. Oil, probably. These cables were almost like the ones connecting Cybermen together on the inside, but not quite. Similar, but he’d bet it wasn’t Cyber tech. 

He stepped back out into the middle of the hallway, and realized he was ready to burst. He hadn’t talked in far too long, almost fifteen minutes. And who knows how long he’d been lying there, so it was more than possibly even longer than that, and he had to change that. 

“Hello?” he called, and for such an expansive space the lack of an echo was bone chilling. Again, this time as loud as he could: “Hello!” 

There was no response, and he kicked at the ground, scuffing his shoes against the metal floor. “I know,” he said between kicks, “that you’ve got me here for a reason. Why don’t you come out and say it, whoever you are? Is it a secret? I’m good at keeping secrets.” 

He looked up from his feet, did a quick sweep of the hallway again. He said, more quietly, “I’ve got no one to tell them to.”

He sighed, and started walking down the hallway, picking which way to go at random, and calling out, “You’re making this very boring, you know. Not a very good host. Do you want to hear my theory?”

Silence.

“My theory is that you’re some immense robot and I’m stuck in the middle of you,” the Doctor said, putting on an accusatory tone. He chuckled to himself.  _ Good one, Doctor. _ Thank you, Pond. No, stop that. Couldn’t start doing that. “Or,” he tried, “look at all these wires. Wires and wires and wires. And you know what has a lot of wires? A computer.”

He stood still, looking up at the ceiling, at the cables strung along it like sick vines. “Is that what it is? Are you a computer?” He felt himself start to get angry, and sick of being stuck wherever this was, and hungry for answers, and he yelled, “Hello? Computer?”

Silence, still. 

He looked down and grumbled a string of sounds that would read as grumpy under his breath. When he looked back up, he saw it. 

A ways down the hallway in the direction he was looking, a figure stood, perfectly centered. The green light behind it silhouetted it, and it wasn’t moving. 

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” the Doctor called, and he started walking over to the figure at a brisk pace. 

“How can I help you?” a voice called back. 

“Help me?” The Doctor frowned. It was less the words that were troubling, it was more that voice. He knew that voice. Sans accent, but still. “I’d like some more light, please.” 

“Of course.” 

That green light grew brighter, and the Doctor could see little phosphorescent crystals peeking through the cabling above and around him, providing a more even glow. He took the last few steps to reach the figure, dreading what he’d find. “Now, I know I know that voice, and this isn’t very nice of you.”

“This interface isn’t familiar with you,” said that figure, because even though it was talking in his voice and wearing his face, it wasn’t him. Jamie McCrimmon was gone. 

“Question-”

“Yes?” 

“Why do you look…” The Doctor pointed to it, grimacing. “-like that? That’s already someone’s face, you can’t just take it.” 

The figure smiled Jamie’s smile. “The physical image is selected based on surface memories, which, you’ll be happy to know, is as far as my scans can penetrate.” 

The Doctor nodded. “So,” he said grimly. “You’re a computer.”

“Yes,” said the figure. “And as I mentioned before, this interface isn’t familiar with you, so if you would state your preferred name and pronouns, that would be much appreciated.”

“Er, the Doctor,” he said warily. “He and him.”

“Wonderful,” said the interface. “Now, you did call for me. Have I answered all of your questions?”

The Doctor blinked. “Haven’t even scratched the surface, actually, buddy. First off, why do you look like Jamie?”

The interface put a hand to its chest. “As I said-”

“Yes, memories, blah blah blah,” the Doctor cut it off. “Got that. But why him? Out of everyone, why him?”

“Do you have a problem with it?”

“Yeah, I have a problem with it,” the Doctor snapped. “It’s my friend’s face, I don’t like you using it like that.” 

The interface frowned Jamie’s frown. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do about that.” 

“And where’s your accent?” he continued, flapping a hand at the interface. “That face goes with an accent, and you’ve messed it up. Typical computer. Can’t even get that right.” 

“Is this better?” the interface asked, inflection slightly different than before.

“Absolutely not. More Scottish. Give me more Scottish,” he grumbled. 

“How about this?” 

The Doctor froze. The second the interface made an attempt at the accent, it was shocking all over again how much it sounded like Jamie. “Nailed it,” he muttered. “Perfect.” 

The interface looked genuinely pleased. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“Computer, can you tell me where the hell I am?” he asked, and, he noted, he had to be far enough from the TARDIS to be able to swear. One piece of information. One step closer to figuring it out. 

“You’re on a data storing world, Doctor,” the interface said.

The Doctor shuddered at hearing his name in Jamie’s voice coming out of that thing’s mouth. 

“A whole planet devoted to archiving digital information,” it continued. “Pretty interesting, isn’t it?”

Jamie’s voice, the Doctor noted, and now Jamie’s accent, but the interface still didn’t have Jamie’s diction. “Yeah, it is,” he replied. “And what are you?”

“Customer service.” Jamie did a little bow. “This planet was decommissioned a long time ago and all the data was offloaded, so I don’t get many visitors, but I’m here to help whoever stumbles upon it find what they’re looking for.”

The Doctor realized, with a start, that he’d just referred to the thing as Jamie in his mind. No, couldn’t do that. The interface, he reminded himself. It was just the interface. “Could you help me find a way out?”

“No transports are currently running,” the interface said, shrugging. “So there’s no open passages up to the planet’s surface. Sorry, Doctor.” 

“Then what am I supposed to do?” the Doctor exploded. He took a step back and forced himself to breathe. 

“I think…” the interface said, touching a finger to its cheek. “I think you’re supposed to survive.” 

A chill ran through the Doctor, and he pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “Is there something down here?”

“You and me,” the interface said, smiling Jamie’s smile. “And a few unrecorded bio and cybernetic life forms. Is that everything?”

“No, that is not everything,” spat the Doctor. “I also wanted to ask you… um. I wanted to ask you um.” He raked through his brains, trying to come up with a single question that would get him any more information on how to escape or get off-planet or whatever. 

“That’s not a question, Doctor,” the interface said, and it laughed a little bit. 

“Oh, shut up, Jamie,” the Doctor muttered, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes and trying to think. “I mean- computer. Shut up, computer.” 

“Seeing as I can’t be of assistance right now, I’ll leave,” said the interface. “If you do think up another question, just say the word and I’ll be there to answer it.” 

The Doctor glared at it, and as he did, it broke apart into small cubes of color and light which got smaller and smaller until the whole interface image was gone. He ran a hand through the air where it had stood, and couldn’t help but feel a dulled echo of the emptiness that’d hit him when he first lost Jamie. He knew better, he wasn’t stupid, and this computer wasn’t Jamie, but seeing it was hard. 

He squared his jaw and kept walking down the hallway, eyeing the little side passages with more intent every time he walked by one. Finally, he couldn’t keep pushing past them, and he stopped at the threshold of one. 

“What’s down here?” he murmured to himself, and noticed that it was far less well lit down the side corridor than it was in the main hallway. 

There was a sound, just a slight one, and just suddenly, coming from down the little passage. Metal on metal, but not tearing or screeching. More skittering. A metal dog’s nails on a metal floor, perhaps.

The hair on his arms stood up, and his stomach clenched.  _ It’s just a weird noise, Doctor. _ I know, Pond. And no! None of that! He mentally slapped himself. “Anybody there?” he called, trying not to sound overly nervous. 

Silence. 

He felt a little sick, he realized, and the green light was starting to make his vision swim if he didn’t focus hard enough. Or maybe it was the headache making it do that. Didn’t matter. Either way, still bad. He gave himself another slap, physically this time, just a gentle snap-out-of-it pat on the cheek. “Seriously, guys,” he muttered. “Whoever’s back there, it’s not funny. Come on out where I can see you.” 

One of the little crystalline lights was struggling to illuminate the entire little passage, and, as another skitter sounded out, the light blinked. 

The Doctor practically jumped out of his skin, almost choking on a sharp inhale of breath, and he flung himself out of the entry to the passage, pressing himself against the wall next to it, his hearts thundering in his chest. He swallowed, throat dry. 

Whatever it was that was down that tunnel had crossed over the light. 

He licked his lips, trying to wet them, and, after a minute or so, leaned back out, looking down the passage again. 

The light was glowing, strong as it ever had been. 

He blew out a breath carefully, shakily. “Ha,” he called out into the dark, clenching his hands into tight fists to stop the tremors running through them. “Scaredy cat, aren’t you. Or, maybe not cat. You’re just a big scaredy-thing. Hiding in the dark.” He reached up and straightened his bowtie. “And you’d better stay there.” 

He started walking, rotating his angle so he could keep watching the entrance to the side passage. He did that until he was walking backwards, and then turned and broke into a run. After a minute, he let himself slow down, and then stop. He caught his breath, looked up and down the hallway, and assured himself that nothing was following him. 

He had no idea why he’d been so struck with fear in that moment. It was completely out of the ordinary, but then again, so was everything else here. An environment conducive of terror, he reasoned, would… conduce terror. That seemed plausible, and a possible explanation for it calmed him down a little. 

He wiped his hands on the knees of his pants, straightened back up, and kept walking, this time at a more leisurely, strolling pace. 

“You know,” he said aloud, to no one in particular, “there’s an awful lot of cables here for something as far along in the digital turn as a datasphere. Oh, datasphere, that’s a good one. Has a better ring to it than data storing world, don’t you think? Hello, and welcome to the Datasphere!” He chuckled, and, looking around and reminding himself of his surroundings, immediately stopped. When he kept speaking, his voice was lower, and more serious. “But really, shouldn’t it all be chips and circuit boards by now?”

Silence. 

“Weird. Just in my opinion,” he finished. He clasped his hands together, and looked back up at the ceiling, tracing the cables along their routes with his eyes. He started whistling a tune, just absentmindedly. Nothing real, just a sequence of notes, just as it came to him. “I used to be a musician, you know,” he said out loud. “I probably could be again, if I practiced.” 

He tucked his hands into his pockets and resumed his improvised whistling song. 

He walked for what felt like at least half an hour, and the hallway still seemed equally unending. Never a turn, never a door, never anything, just that green glow and the little passages off from the sides. 

He realized he was dehydrated when he was finally able to string together the headache and the dry mouth as symptoms of the same issue. He ran his hands over his jacket, knowing he didn’t have anything on him, just more of a reflex than anything. He cleared his throat. 

“Hey,” he called, looking up, and then around. He didn’t know where it would come from. “Hey, computer.” 

“Yes, Doctor?” The interface appeared just behind his right shoulder. 

“Don’t-!” He sighed, rolling out his neck. “-do that. Don’t do that. I’ve been having a day as it is.” 

The interface gave a little shrug and a rueful smile. “I’m sorry. What can I help you with?”

“I need something to drink,” he muttered. “Do you have any water?”

Hands clasped behind its back, the interface walked around so it could face the Doctor. It pulled one of Jamie’s classic winces. “Sadly, that would be counterproductive, wouldn’t it? Water? In a databank? Come on, Doctor.”

“Oh! You should call it the Datasphere, instead of whatever you called it before,” the Doctor said, grinning and pointing a finger at the interface. “Good, isn’t it? It’ll catch on like wildfire. Thought of it earlier.” 

“Datasphere,” Jamie repeated, rolling the word around on his tongue. He laughed shortly. “I do like it, Doctor. Noted.” 

“I thought you would,” the Doctor replied. He started walking, and Jamie fell into step next to him, keeping pace with him. “Actually, though… is there really nothing to drink? Seems a little bit… bad, doesn’t it? No water. A planet with no water. Don’t like it, see? It even sounds bad. It sounds like… like a bad thriller novel.”

“I could help you look,” Jamie offered. “I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing, but I’ll check again.” 

“Thanks, Jamie,” the Doctor murmured, letting his eyes wander over all the cables yet again. 

“It’s what I’m here for,” Jamie replied. “Give me a second.” He dematerialized, just like he’d done earlier. 

And for heaven’s sake, he wasn’t Jamie. It. It wasn’t Jamie. The Doctor pressed a hand to his temple. He had to get that through his stupid head. But his head, currently, was killing him, and thinking was hard. He’d fix it later. 

“Doctor!” The interface reappeared, a big smile on Jamie’s face. “I’ve just reviewed the planet’s- the Datasphere’s schematics and ran a humidity check, and I believe there’s a place you can get water!”

“Thank goodness,” the Doctor muttered. “Where?”

“I’ll direct you,” the interface said. “It’s not far, just follow me.” It started walking off. 

The Doctor, for just a moment, had the intense feeling of being watched. It took all his willpower not to turn around and check behind him, but he had a feeling that would only make it worse, because nothing would be there and he’d be left with a panicky sense of wrongness. He followed the interface, and brushed the feeling off. 

“Just conversationally,” he said, after a stretch of walking in silence, “you don’t know anything about Jamie, do you?”

“Only what you tell me,” the interface replied jovially. 

“I don’t know if I like you,” the Doctor shot back. Maybe it was just his headache, but he was feeling argumentative. “Jamie wouldn’t smile when there was nothing to smile about. He was a soldier, not a… not a salesman. You’ve got him all wrong.” 

“My apologies,” said the interface.

“Your apologies,” the Doctor echoed mockingly. “You know, when I met him he was in this army. We landed on accident, we didn’t- not that I don’t know how to steer my ship, just- it was a fluke, and I was… younger, and anyways we ended up in Culloden during that war.” And as they walked, he told the story of how he and Jamie first met, just to pass the time, just to have something to say, and to prevent that terrible silence from falling. By the time he was finished, his throat was sore, just because it was so dry. It felt like they’d been walking for hours.

After a few minutes’ quiet, the interface said, “We’re going to take a left up here.”

The Doctor stopped. “But that’s… that’s going into one of the little mini corridors. I saw something, when I was- there was something in one of those.” 

“Don’t be silly, Doctor,” the interface said, shaking its head slightly. 

“I’m not being-”

“There’s hardly anything on the whole Datasphere. It’s highly unlikely that one of the other lifeforms would just happen to be in the same place as us.”

“I know what I saw, Jamie,” the Doctor snapped. “You’re just… stupid.”

“Maybe,” Jamie retorted, “but do you want water or not?” 

“Oh, alright.” The Doctor gave an exaggerated sigh. “Lead the way.” 

Jamie did, walking confidently into the passage. 

The Doctor stopped at its threshold, something deep inside of him warning him against taking another step. 

“Doctor!” Jamie called. He’d already disappeared into the darkness. 

“Jamie- wait, I’m just-” He took a deep breath. He needed water. If he didn’t get water, he’d pass out, or worse. Couldn’t have that. “Hang on.” He took the first step, and then ran until he could see Jamie again up ahead of him in the passage. Upon reaching him, he said, “It’s a little spooky, isn’t it?”

Jamie shrugged. “No.” 

“Well you’re… you’re brave about things you shouldn’t be, because you’re stupid,” the Doctor muttered, waving a hand at him. He realized he was starting to get dizzy. “How close are we?”

“We’re really just around the corner,” Jamie promised. “Come on, Doctor. You can do it.” 

The Doctor gritted his teeth and just followed Jamie. One foot in front of the other. That was it. He was so focused on his own feet that he didn’t even realize the passage had changed until he heard Jamie’s voice. 

“Well done, Doctor,” Jamie said, and he sounded proud. 

The Doctor looked up, and realized they’d come into an expansive room, high ceiling, warehouse size or bigger, and square. Empty. Most importantly, the green glow was gone. The light in the room was blue, if anything, but really closer to neutral. There was a part of one wall that was covered with pipes coming out of and going back into the concrete, stretching the height of the warehouse. That was where Jamie stood, so the Doctor made his way over to him.

Jamie pointed to one of the pipes that steam was leaking from every few moments, and sure enough, a trickle of water was running down from one of the joints in the pipe and methodically dripping onto the floor. 

“How do I…” The Doctor looked at it, watching it drip. After coming all that way, it seemed even now unattainable. The drops were far between, and he wasn’t exactly carrying a cup. 

“Do you have a cup?” Jamie asked. 

The Doctor let his head drop into his hand, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, Jamie, I don’t.” 

“Surely you’ve got to have something,” Jamie pushed. 

“No, I-” He stopped. There was an idea. The waiting time was painful to think about, but it was better than nothing. He pulled off his coat, and then undid his tie and suspenders. Unbuttoning his shirt was taking a lot of time, and his fingers kept slipping. He wondered again exactly how long he’d been sleeping on the floor of the hallway before waking up, because he genuinely felt like he hadn’t had water in over twenty-four hours.

“What are you doing?” Jamie inquired, after watching him struggle with his shirt for a few minutes. 

“Shut up, Jamie, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he muttered, finally getting out of his shirt and dropping it as well. He closed a hand around the fabric of his undershirt. “Cotton.” He pulled the garment over his head. “Cotton retains water.” 

He knelt down, spreading his jacket out on the ground under the leak in the pipe. Then, he balled his undershirt up and set it on top of the jacket where the water would fall. He looked up at Jamie, grinning. “What about that? You can say it, it’s brilliant.” 

“It’s brilliant,” Jamie echoed obediently. 

The Doctor sighed, sitting down and leaning his head back against the cool concrete of the wall. He grabbed his button up and slowly put it back on. “Thank you,” he managed, and he closed his eyes. Deep breath in, deep breath out.  _ It’ll be a bit of a wait, Doctor, but nothing you can’t do _ . He was too disoriented even to get rid of that nagging mind-Amy he’d been trying so hard to erase. He decided he’d rather wait until he had enough water to actually drink than stay by the leak and hold his hand out for every individual drop. “Wake me up when it’s all wet, alright?”

“Will do, Doctor,” came Jamie’s voice from somewhere nearby. 

The Doctor didn’t care enough about placing him exactly to open his eyes. “I’m just going to rest.” 

“You should,” Jamie said. “I’ll keep a look out, if you’d like.” 

“You used to say that,” the Doctor murmured, mouth painfully dry. 

“Oh?”

“That you’d look after me.” 

“Well, I’ll look after you, then,” Jamie amended, his voice warm. 

“Jamie- why am I here?” the Doctor asked, and drifted off before he could hear the answer. 

* * *

“Doctor? Doctor, you’d better wake up.”

The Doctor took a deep breath, and came to consciousness with his hearts racing. He blinked, trying to ignore the absolute agony his head was in. Just from his own medical knowledge, it felt safe to say that rather than going to sleep, he’d passed out. His hands felt sort of numb, and pins and needles ran up through his arms. He gave his body a minute to adjust to being awake. 

“Oh, good,” Jamie said. He was sitting cross legged on the ground about a foot away. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for nine and a half minutes.” 

“Just give me a nudge next time,” the Doctor groaned, and he reached over to where he’d put his shirt. It was cold and wet to the touch, and he picked it up and held it to his lips. 

“I can’t give you a nudge,” Jamie replied. He reached towards the Doctor’s chest, and when he made contact, his fingers dissolved into those digital projection cubes again. “I’m sorry.” He reformed when he pulled his hand back.

He shook his head, giving a ‘no worries’ shrug. Again, he was reminded coldly that he probably shouldn’t call the interface by Jamie’s name. When he’d wrung all the water out of his shirt, he put it carefully back under the leak. “How long have I been here?” he asked, and his throat felt better already. In a few minutes, he’d get some alertness and critical thinking back. 

“Twenty-eight hours,” the interface answered. “You’re not human, are you? You look human.”

“So do you, clearly it doesn’t mean much,” the Doctor said grimly. He sighed. “No, I’m not.” 

“Dulcian?”

“Nope.”

“Thal?”

“Freezing.”

“What?” The interface cocked its head to one side, Jamie’s classic confused expression on its face. 

“Like, you’re not getting warm,” the Doctor explained. “You’re not even cold, you’re freezing, that’s how far off you are.”

“Ah. Noted.”

“Why do you ask, actually?” The Doctor realized that his headache was beginning to fade, just a bit, and he relaxed a few degrees. “You’ve only ever answered questions before. What’s this, evolution?”

The interface gave him a disappointed look. “You don’t seem very physically stable. If I knew your biology, I’d know better how to help you.”

“Oh.” The Doctor smiled, laughed a little. “That’s actually rather sweet.”

“Of course, if you would prefer not to disclose that with me, I’ll try my best without it. I am here to help you, after all.” 

The Doctor nodded. “I’m a Time Lord,” he said, his voice growing quieter. “The last of the Time Lords, actually, isn’t that neat?” He hummed under his breath. “I’m an antique.” 

The interface was quiet for a while. Then, it said, “Do you need anything else right now?”

“No, you can-” The Doctor waved a hand. “-hologram away, or whatever it is you do.” 

“If you need me, just say the word.” The interface dissolved in that way it did, and it was slightly less shocking and slightly less of a gut punch than it was the first time. 

The Doctor waited for water two more times, and when he felt like he could get up without feeling dizzy, he did that. He stretched his back, and rolled out his shoulders and neck. This whole thing, he mused, was actually terrible. Being stuck in a place you didn’t know was one thing, but being stuck in a wildly unsettling place you didn’t know with absolutely no concept of how you got there or why you were put there was another thing entirely. He was alone. The computer interface looked like Jamie McCrimmon of all people, which threw him off entirely. At least it was an old wound. He wasn’t sure if he could live with it if the computer had chosen Amy. 

So. Twenty-eight hours. A lot could happen in twenty-eight hours. You could try every shape of pasta in twenty-eight hours. You could probably build a boat, if it was a small boat and you worked hard. In his case, you could pass out from dehydration. Not very impressive. 

“Alright,” he murmured, to no one in particular. “Big old hard drive. Hard drive the size of a planet. What could you possibly want with me?” He began pacing back and forth, rubbing his chin. Thinking, he found, was hard right now. “Information? That’s what data planets are for, and I do have an awful lot of the stuff. No, no, no, that’s stupid. Stupid Doctor.” 

He looked around the space. “Whoever you are that put me here, I hope you’re listening, or else I’m rambling on to myself, and that’d be crazy. Why don’t you just tell me what you want from me?”

Silence. 

“Of course,” he grumbled. “Because that would be easy.” 

He walked to the exit of the warehouse room, and looked back on it. He couldn’t afford to lose it, but he figured he could just ask the interface to show him the way back. He felt a little bit uncomfortable having to rely on it, just in case it became compromised or chose to cut off information, but he told himself that that was unlikely. It was a resource available to him, and he should use it. 

He left the room, and shivered without his coat. Once he was back in the little passage, fear crept in over him. He wasn’t sure why this bogeyman idea of something lurking in the dark was frightening him now. He’d laughed at the concept of this creature so many times he couldn’t count them all if he had a hundred fingers. But something about it now was just setting him off the track slightly, just a very gentle ‘whatever was in that passage is Wrong’, and it was terrifying. 

Amy would probably laugh at him. She’d say,  _ oh, Doctor, don’t tell me you’re scared of the dark _ . And then she’d laugh a little more, nervously, regretfully, and she’d say,  _ please don’t tell me you’re scared of the dark _ \- she’d take a tiny breath here -  _ because that means there’s something there that’s actually worth being scared of, and that- _ and then she’d shake her head with her eyes wide and a sort of comical wince on her face, and she’d go,  _ yeah, let’s not do that.  _ She’d pat his arm or something along those lines, give him a solid nod, and walk on. 

He came back to himself, and found his throat completely closed up. He coughed out one sob, and then another, and then he leaned slowly back against the wall of cables, clamping a hand over his eyes, his whole body shaking with grief. He let himself sink to the floor, back still pressed to the wall. He hadn’t cried - not really, not sobbing crying - since the graveyard. He tried to take a breath, and the salt of the tears he inhaled stung the back of his throat and blossomed on his tongue. His chest ached. He wanted his best friend back. 

He let his hand fall from his face and grabbed his other hand, clasping them together tight, trying to stop their shaking. He stared at the opposite wall of the passage, the little crystalline lights nestled between the cables diffracted into a million tiny green stars by the sheen of tears over his eyes. 

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Don’t think about Amy, don’t think about Rory, don’t think about any of it. Can’t afford to do this now.

He ran his hands through his face and over his hair and shook them out, trying to get rid of the feeling that he couldn’t take a breath and get it down further than the back of his throat. He stood up, took a minute, and kept walking along the passageway.

Usually, he was fascinated by the inner workings of machines, but right now just looking at the thick oily cables stretching forever and looping over and through one another like disgusting knotted roots- it was making him nauseous. He needed to find the TARDIS, he needed to be in his ship. Getting out and getting away and getting free was important, but first and foremost he needed a change of scene. A familiar setting. 

Eventually, he came out of the side passage and back onto that main hallway. Hideously straight and never ending. He picked a direction and started walking, and he walked until he looked and felt like he could pretend he never broke down, and kept walking. He tried on smiles, he made faces, murmured bits of signature greetings and phrases to test his mask, and it held up. Good. That was essential. 

“Even though no one’s here to see it,” he added, loudly and bitterly, again waiting for some sort of echo that never came. 

Of all the things he had to be, of course the thing he ended up being was alone. 

* * *

He spent the next few days pacing the hallway for hours at a time, going as far as he trusted himself to go. He’d ramble on about nothing to pass the time, talking for the sake of just talking, talking to no one, or to the big hypothetical ‘you’ who’d stuck him in here, or to anyone but Amy. He tried to avoid pursuing conversations with the interface, as well, because he didn’t want to seem anything less than self sufficient. 

However he did ask it, every day when he was done walking, to point out the passage that brought him back to the warehouse room. Every single passage off the hallway looked exactly the same, and with the hallway itself going on forever, any one of them he passed could be the one that led back to those leaky pipes. 

On the fourth or maybe fifth day, he decided that he was being ridiculous, and he stood on the threshold of one of the passages he’d never been down and vowed to go wherever it led him. 

“See, I’m not scared,” he was saying, taking the first step into the passage. “Me? Not scared, not ever.” He laughed, and there was no response, and no echo, and he stopped almost immediately after he started because it was so unnerving. He should’ve been used to it by now, but it still threw him off. “I am not… scared…” he repeated to himself, quietly and absentmindedly as he walked down the passage, running his hand along the wall to guide him. His fingers would get that black grease all over them, but he’d rather that than not be able to see a turn on the passage and walk right into the cables. He’d underestimated how much less light there’d be, and now it was bothering him. 

“The funny thing about stuff like this,” he said, concentrating on getting one foot down in front of the last, “is that there’s a hundred and one thousand of these little tunnel things and down any one of them could be anything. Could be a big old zoo. Could be chocolate cake.” He smiled at that. “It could be my ship, although… hell. Damn. Shit. No, it’s not my ship, at least not down this one.” 

He’d become accustomed to swearing at intermittent periods on his walks just to see if he was near enough to the ship for the filter to affect him. So far, nothing, but it was also helping him get out some of his frustration, so that was good. 

“Another funny thing about this,” he continued, voice feeling tight in his throat, “is with a tunnel this dark, I have no idea what’s right in front of me.” 

He froze in place, terror grabbing hold of him, spurred on by his own words. 

“Hello?” he whispered. “Anybody there?”

Silence. 

“Please, please, if you’re here you’ve got to say something, don’t-” He stopped, taking a few quick breaths and trying to think logically about this. Nothing. He couldn’t think logically if he couldn’t see anything and whatever it was that he’d first heard down that passage days ago was standing right in front of him and he had no way to know when or how it would hurt him but he knew that it would, eventually, somehow. “Don’t just stand there.” 

His hand scrabbled for a bundle of cables detached enough from the wall to grab on to, just to have something he could hold, something secure, something to ground him. 

“Hey,” he yelled, the change in his own volume making his stomach clench with nerves. “Get the hell out of my way and-”

A skittering noise sounded. The same skittering he’d heard the first day. Except for it wasn’t far off down the passage, and it wasn’t in front of him. It came from directly behind him, and he turned around so quickly his hand dragged along the cables and the skin was sliced on some protruding bit of metal or plastic, so quickly his feet caught on each other and he tumbled to the ground. 

He pushed himself back as fast as he could, and when he felt he had a bit of distance covered he scrambled back to his feet. All he could hear was blood rushing in his ears and air tearing through his lungs and for all he knew the thing could still be there, so close, so close, so- “Jamie!” he screamed, continuing to back up until there was a curve in the passage and he slammed his back into it. “Jamie, I need help! Jamie- please! I need-”

There was that sound, that metal dog’s nails on metal hardwood, and it was still way too close for the distance he thought he’d put between him and it. 

“Jamie!” His voice snapped, and he couldn’t catch his breath. “Jamie, Jamie, you can’t do this to me, please don’t make me do this.”

He pressed himself back against the wall of the passage, struck by the thought that the more he could flatten himself against the cables, the less likely the thing would spot him. 

“Just lights!” he begged. “Just give me lights! Just anything! Jamie-” He stopped, and with a panicked thrill, he remembered something. “Computer!”

“Hello, Doctor. Is there-”

The Doctor heaved a huge sigh of relief, and however silly it was a wave of safety washed over him. “Lights,” he said. “Please, I need lights.” 

“Of course.” 

Familiar green light filled the passage, and the form of Jamie became visible opposite the Doctor. Other than him, though, the passage was completely empty. 

“There was-” The Doctor was craning his neck, trying to see if there was something around the corner. No. Completely empty. “There was something-”

The interface smiled. “Now, Doctor, I’ve told you how statistically improbable it would be for-”

“I know,” the Doctor snapped. “It was there, I heard it, and I know it was there, and if you try to tell me it wasn’t there I’ll… I’ll…” He waved a hand, and after a moment of getting his breath back and letting the fear fade away, he asked, “Can I just call you Jamie? Just for convenience’s sake, not because- just because it’s easier.”

“Of-”

“Shorter and nicer than saying computer this and computer that,” the Doctor continued, talking quickly, driven by a need to justify it. “Make it so when I ask for you it can be with that name, can you do that?” He glared at him. “Well, can you?”

Jamie waited a moment more, as if expecting the Doctor to talk further, and then finally answered, “Of course I can. I’m glad you feel that way.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” the Doctor muttered under his breath, and he could still hear his heartbeats. 

“Oh- Doctor, your hand!” Jamie brought one of his own hands up to his face, and was doing human worry very convincingly. 

The Doctor looked down at it, and saw the thin slice across his palm, the area around which was sticky with grease and blackened with oil. The moment he looked at it, it started to throb, and he became overly aware of how his fingers were wet with the blood that was running down them. “I cut it on the cables,” he murmured, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. “Jamie, I swear there was something here.” 

“And I believe you, Doctor.” Jamie took a step closer, gaze flicking between the Doctor’s palm and his face. “When have I ever not believed you?”

“Never. I don’t know.” The Doctor brought his hand up to eye level, squinting at it. A voice somewhere in him was saying it was something he had to be worried about. “When I first told you my box could travel in time. You didn’t believe me then, that was before you started taking everything I said as gospel. Bad decision, by the way. No one should ever do that.” He untucked his button up and pressed his hand against his shirttail, trying to staunch the bleeding. 

“I’ve never seen your box, Doctor.” 

The Doctor shook his head, feeling mildly sick. “No, the other Jamie has. The real Jamie. My mistake.” 

“Well, now I know.” Jamie gave him a kind smile. “Are you feeling alright?”

“No,” the Doctor muttered. “I mean- yes, of course, but is this…” He nodded to his hand. “This thing. Is it going to get bad?”

“Bad how?” Jamie tilted his head to one side, regarding the cut. 

“Germs, and… infection, and that,” the Doctor said, hating every second of thinking about it. “There’s a bunch of stuff from the cables on there, and it’s… yucky. Is it clean?” 

Jamie laughed. “Obviously. There’s zero point zero zero percent bacterial matter from the wall on your hand.”

The Doctor frowned. “That’s not possible. I’ve touched things, I’ve been touching things since I got here. I-”

There was a noise, like a click, and Jamie’s eyes fell closed, his face immediately dropping any expression that’d been there a second ago. His hands fell to his sides, and he stood there as if asleep on his feet. After a brief moment of that, he blinked, his smile came back, and he shook his head the tiniest bit. “It’s most likely perfectly clean, yes,” he said jovially. “There’s about four point two eight percent bacterial matter from the wall on your hand, but nothing harmful.” 

“What did you just do there?” the Doctor asked, and caught himself trying to read Jamie’s face for any actual emotional giveaway.  _ Nice one, Doctor. Seeing if a robot’s face would let something slip? Wow. Alright _ . And, Amy, honestly, not the time. 

“Answered your question, Doctor.” Jamie was looking at him like he was dressed funny, or something. 

“But you- you did something just now where you-” The Doctor struggled to think of a way to describe it. “Shut off? For a second.” 

“I don’t shut off,” Jamie replied, and his tone was reassuring. “As long as you need me, I’ll be here.” 

Something snapped in the Doctor, and he went to jab a finger into Jamie’s chest. His hand went straight through instead of making contact, meeting absolutely no resistance. 

The place he’d touched went up in those little holographic cubes, and when he pulled his hand back, they reformed the fragment of Jamie that he’d disrupted. 

“Do not,” the Doctor said, trying not to let it faze him, “tell me what’s real and what’s not real. Don’t ever think you know better about what’s real than I do.”

“I didn’t-”

“You’re not real,” the Doctor roared. “You’re just bits of light in the right order! You’re not even a body, you’re not even anything, you’re just- you’re not- you’re nothing!” He slammed his good hand against his own chest. “I’m real! I have- lost things that you can’t imagine losing; I’ve seen things you wouldn’t see even in your- in your dreams! I carry so much with me, every second of every minute of every- hour, of every day, and I-” He stopped, not for running out of words, or running out of steam, but because what he was trying to say caught in his throat. 

Jamie blinked, and took a step back. “I know, Doctor.” 

“Don’t tell me what happened,” the Doctor spat, losing the energy to pursue what he’d been crescendoing towards, and he hunched back over his wounded hand, resuming what he was sure was an evil posture. “I know what happened, you don’t. I’m right. You’re wrong. End of story.”

“Noted,” Jamie said quietly. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll go. Remember, if you have any questions, just ask.” 

“Wait- Jamie-” He felt pathetic. “Will you show me which passage goes back to the warehouse room?”

“Of course.” Jamie turned and started walking back out towards the hallway.

They made the trek back to the warehouse in utter silence, the only sound being the Doctor’s footsteps on the hallway’s metal floor, and when they got there, the Doctor said he wouldn’t need anything else from Jamie and watched him disappear. 

He sat down, drank the water he’d collected, and thought. Whatever he’d heard, whatever was there, that had to be real, didn’t it? It wasn’t just his mind playing tricks on him. Or was it? No, obviously not, obviously, clearly not, because he’d heard it with his own ears, and more than once. But… it had been very dark, and he’d already been on edge, or scared. He’d been getting himself ready to be frightened. Plus, Jamie had said it wasn’t likely, and when it comes down to a computer’s reckoning versus a living person’s, the computer will be more statistically accurate.

No. He was right. He knew he was right. He’d heard the thing behind him. He knew it was real. Trusting machines over real people’s instincts had gotten loads of people all throughout intergalactic history in a lot of trouble, and he was going to try very hard not to be one of them. So. He’d have to trust himself, and that meant accepting that the thing in the passage was real. And if he did that, he’d have to start thinking about how to confront it, and how to stop it. 

He figured he should sleep first, though, because a clock inside his head was telling him that logically, he should be tired. He shivered. The warehouse wasn’t a very forgiving bedroom.

He grabbed his jacket from where it lay, and balled it up for a pillow. Sleeping on concrete night after night was making it hard to actually- well, sleep. He looked at his hand, and found with relief that it had stopped bleeding. When he saw the cut, though, it started hurting again, a dull, low ache. 

“Come on,” he muttered, and he put his hand in his pocket so he couldn’t look at it again. “Got to stop thinking about it, I guess. Forget about it.” He smiled, and laid down, trying to get comfortable on his jacket. “Mind over matter. Love that phrase, mind over matter. I’ve always thought it’s amazing how people just- put words in the just the right order. That’s something very human, you know-” He turned his head, as if he expected someone to be lying next to him. He found himself just looking out across the floor of the warehouse, and he licked his lips. 

He didn’t know what he was doing. He should just stop talking, maybe forever. 

He looked up at the warehouse ceiling, meters upon meters above his head, and he sighed. There was sort of a cathedral element to warehouses, he reasoned, because his brain had been quiet for too long. Maybe not to all warehouses, and maybe that element was just that they were both massive spaces and had immensely high ceilings, but it was something. 

Minutes dragged by, and his body refused to sleep. He’d try, and he’d do all the little tricks - counting in your head, meditation, so on - and his eyes would inevitably snap back open. He was getting frustrated, because all he could think about was that he was breaking the ‘never ever go to bed angry, not ever’ rule he and Jamie had made centuries ago. And he knew that he really wasn’t even doing that, but it was bothering him so thoroughly he wanted to step out of his skin. 

He fussed with his jacket, and with his posture, and made every possible change, but nothing was working and nothing was going to work, and he sat up abruptly, resigning himself to what he was about to do. 

“Jamie, I’ve got a question,” he called. 

“Yes, Doctor?” Jamie appeared, and, noticing the Doctor’s position, sat down as well, crossing his legs neatly. 

“I wanted to apologize,” the Doctor grumbled. “For yelling at you, earlier. I didn’t mean it.” 

Jamie smiled. “It’s obviously not important. Did you-”

“No, I’m trying to say that I’m sorry, alright?” The Doctor sighed. “And I am. Sorry. I wasn’t even angry with you, it was other things.” 

“Did you have a question?”

“Can you pretend that you care? Just- please. Act like you care, just for a minute here. For me.” 

“I’ll try,” Jamie said politely. “But, Doctor, why do you care?”

The Doctor dragged his hands down his face. “Because a long time ago I promised you I’d never go to sleep angry at you.”

“Are you angry at me?”

“No, I just…” The Doctor shrugged. “I wanted you to believe me, and tell me I was right. I like when people tell me I’m right. And then you were saying I wasn’t, and maybe I really wasn’t. Did you know that can happen? I can be wrong? I’m wrong so often it doesn’t…” He shook his head. “Sorry I yelled.” 

“I don’t forgive you.” 

“What?” He looked up, and watched Jamie’s face break into a smile. 

Jamie laughed. “No, of course I forgive you, Doctor. I’m always going to forgive you. I had you there for a second, though, didn’t I?” 

“Yes,” the Doctor said, and he let himself smile too, and then laugh a little. He was taken aback by it, and it made him feel so drastically less alone that he hadn’t even realized how very alone he’d felt before. “Yes you did.”

“Doctor?”

“Jamie.” 

“Are you happy? Can I go?”

“Well, those are two very different questions, actually, with two very different answers,” the Doctor said quietly. “You can’t ask them together like that.”

Jamie was still smiling. “Well, are you happy?”

“No,” the Doctor said automatically. 

“Anything I can do to help?”

The Doctor looked down. “There’s so much to fix you wouldn’t know where to start.” 

“Well, a long time ago I promised to look after you,” Jamie said. “And I’m not planning on breaking that promise. Just tell me if there’s something I can do.”

The Doctor swallowed, and found himself about to cry. Stupid. “Not right now, Jamie. Thanks.” 

“Second question, then. Can I go?”

“Do you want to go?” the Doctor asked, and he felt like he was playing right into some humiliating trap, but he couldn’t stop himself. 

“I want whatever you want,” Jamie answered amicably. 

“I want you to tell me what you want.” He’d said it so gingerly. 

“That’s not a question I can answer.” Jamie smiled. “I’ll go now. If you have any other questions or need any sort of assistance, don’t be scared to ask for me.” 

“Wait, Jamie-” He stopped. He was being an idiot and he knew he was being an idiot. “Goodnight.” 

Jamie nodded, the quick gentle ‘I’ve got you’ nod that Jamie always used to do. “Goodnight, Doctor.” He dematerialized. 

* * *

For the next several days, the Doctor didn’t leave the warehouse room. He couldn’t find it in him to go out and try another passage, or to keep walking down the monotonous eternity that was the hallway. He tried to make the place a little more comfortable, but with only his jacket for padding it was difficult. 

He spent lots of time in conversation with Jamie, just to pass the hours. He talked about their old adventures together, and he talked about the adventures he’d had in between then and now. He talked about Donna, about Sarah Jane, and about Ace. He talked about different dimensions and, just briefly, what happened in the Time War. 

One afternoon, he asked, “Why am I here?”

“If I knew, Doctor, I’d have told you,” Jamie answered, absentmindedly tapping his fingers on the floor next to where he sat. It was odd. The more time passed the more human he seemed. 

“Who made the Datasphere?” the Doctor continued, seized suddenly by an urgency to know. It had been in the background of his mind before, but now, he needed to figure it out, and he had to do it immediately. 

“It was commissioned by the Shadow Proclamation, originally, in six billion and four delta six,” Jamie rattled off. “A record storing planet, just for criminals they processed. Prison files. Et cetera. Fell into obsolescence after the invention of the fiber optic waterfall, all the data was offloaded, the planet is as you know it now.” 

The Doctor thought about it, and it didn’t make sense. Why him? Why here? Who caused it? It was all too tangled up for him to glean head or tail of. He didn’t know what to ask next, so, as a placeholder, he said, “You look nice today.” 

“Thank you.” 

Oh, idea! There it was. “Did the planet hold any data on me?” He smiled. This was a good one. This might get him somewhere he’d start to see real answers. 

“Well, I need a full name,” Jamie replied. 

“The Doctor should work fine,” he said, and he was starting to get exited. It felt like he was onto something. “They know me over at the Shadow Proclamation.” 

“As a prisoner?” Jamie gave him a look. 

“Well-”

“I’ll do a search of echo imprints in the databanks,” Jamie pushed on with a bit of a sigh. He stared off at nothing for a few seconds, then shook his head. “All they had on record for you was that you were a Time Lord, and therefor came from the planet Gallifrey.” 

The Doctor frowned. That didn’t make any sense. There should have been a big, fat file for him in there. “Then why the hell am I here? Who brought me here? There’s no reason-”

“You must’ve brought yourself here,” Jamie said, shrugging. 

“Then where’s my ship, James? Where-” He pointed a finger at him. “-is my ship?”

Jamie looked almost disappointed to him. “If you describe your ship, I can tell you if it’s on the Datasphere.”

“Well, it’s blue, for starters, and very handsome, if I must-”

“Technological components would be a lot more helpful than physical looks, actually,” Jamie interrupted. He folded his hands in his lap and added a polite little, “If you don’t mind.” 

“Right. Well.” Thinking about it, the Doctor realized he knew a lot less about his ship than he probably should. “Time vortex energy signal, you should get one of those. It’s maybe more biological than technological… Ooh, pocket dimension tech. There’s that, it’s got that. Molecular biology altering tech… lots of measure-y instruments I can’t read…”

“Molecular biology altering? What do you have that can-”

“Big thing; headset, wires, pocketwatch, the works,” the Doctor rushed, wanting to get to the part where Jamie told him where his ship was and what passageway he needed to follow in order to get back to it. 

“Have you ever used it?” Jamie asked. 

“Yes,” he answered. “Not often. Can you-”

“How? How does it work?”

“It goes inside you and changes all your atoms, Jamie, how did you think it was going to work?” he snapped. “Really.”

Jamie was staring at him expectantly, propping his head up with one hand and just sort of waiting. 

The Doctor sighed. “It’s called a Chameleon Arch. Basically you put it on, it goes into you and changes you, atom by atom, into a different species, and puts the real you into a receptacle. For me, a watch. Open the watch, get the Time Lord back. I used it to become human. Completely biologically human, and I was… a bit of a bastard, actually.”

Jamie nodded, and shifted so he was sort of lying down, still looking up at the Doctor. He looked comfortable. 

“Oh, do you really want me to-”

He nodded again.

“Fine.” The Doctor shrugged. It didn’t really bother him to talk - it never had, and it probably never would - and it wasn’t like he was going anywhere. He could pass some time before he got answers. Besides, Jamie looked so human. “It’s Time Lord tech, obviously, so I’m not sure if just anyone can use it, but it’s for disguise. When someone’s looking for you, and you’re the only Time Lord left in the universe, they’re going to find you pretty quickly unless you stop being a Time Lord. Hurts a lot, so only use it as a last resort. I’ve actually found it’s usually pretty easy to resolve things without having to use it. I’d only use it in worst, worst, worst, worst case scenarios.”

“Does it have to be a Time Lord becoming a human?”

“I love that you’re asking questions now, you clever little thing,” the Doctor said, letting himself smile, “and honestly I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be human. You can program it to make you anything, as long as you have a good feel of their genetic makeup.” 

“What about, for argument’s sake, something else becoming a Time Lord?”

“Don’t be stupid,” the Doctor said, and he laughed. “You need the genetic code of whatever you’re becoming, and I’m the only Time Lord left. Stuck here on the Datasphere - ooh, rhyme - no one could get my DNA.” 

“Of course,” Jamie agreed. “It’s so interesting.”

“It is, isn’t it? I never think about it like that because it’s just a thing I have, but it actually is,” the Doctor replied. He could probably make a whole little museum out of all the things he had like that.

Jamie rolled over onto his back and looked at the ceiling, spreading his arms out. “There’s so much I don’t know.” 

The Doctor chuckled. “Me too, Jamie. Me too.”

Jamie smiled up at him. 

“And- my ship-”

“Oh, right. Are you sure it can be located with a combined scan for time vortex energy, pocket dimension technology, and a molecular biology altering device?”

“Absolutely positively,” the Doctor answered, and wondered where it would be. It might be a day’s walk, or even more, but just the thought of having a location, however far it might be, was exciting. 

“And that scan is specific enough? Your ship is the only ship that fits those criteria?” Jamie asked. 

“Yes sir.” 

“Alright. I’ll check.” Jame stared up at nothing for a few seconds. “Right.” 

“And?” The Doctor could feel his hearts up in his throat. “Where is it?”

“Oh,” Jamie said nonchalantly. “It’s not here.”

“It’s not- wh- but you- not-” the Doctor spluttered, trying to put it together. 

“Wherever it is, it’s not on the Datasphere. I can’t locate it.” Jamie sat up. “Sorry.” 

The Doctor sat there, and felt like an idiot. He’d been so excited, so expectant of a surefire way to get off the planet. “Not your fault,” he said after a moment.

“Anything else I can do?” Jamie offered.

“Sit here and listen to me talk so I don’t look crazy?” the Doctor suggested. “Because I need to talk, it’s how I… how I think through things.”

“I know.” Jamie looked at him intently for a moment, and then laid back down. “Go ahead.” 

The Doctor nodded. “It’s just that none of this makes sense. At all. It’s making me angry, actually how little it makes sense. Just- logically, it doesn’t go together. In theory there’s no way that this could really be happening.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because how am I here if no one brought me here and I don’t have my ship?” the Doctor asked. “How is it that this planet held all the Shadow Proclamation’s data but nothing on me? How is it that I haven’t-” He stopped, suddenly chilled to the bone. 

“Haven’t what?” Jamie prompted, after a bit of silence. 

“I haven’t eaten anything all the time I’ve been here. How am I- how is that-” The Doctor felt himself slip under the surface of functioning and start to panic. “It’s been days, hasn’t it? I know it’s been days; tell me it’s been days.”

“It’s… been days, Doctor,” Jamie said, an inquisitive tone to his voice. 

“And what about that thing?” the Doctor continued, chest seizing with fear and anxiety. “That thing that always follows me when I go into one of the passages, it’s always there and I’ve never seen it but it’s watching me-”

“Doctor,” Jamie interrupted, sitting back up. “Let’s just take a breath, alright?”

The Doctor glared at him, about to snap at him, but stopped. Jamie was right. Logic, not panic, was the way to come to reasonable answers. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, and then he asked, in what he favored to be a level voice, “How did I forget that I’m supposed to eat?”

“I think you shouldn’t think about it,” Jamie answered, and he moved a little bit closer to the Doctor. “Ignore it, if you can. That’s just my advice, you don’t have to listen.” 

“How- why would I ignore it?” the Doctor demanded, and he felt that somehow, Jamie was missing a vital point here. 

Jamie shrugged. “You’ll get yourself worried thinking about it, and you’re not hungry, are you?”

“Yes I am.” 

“Really?”

“No,” the Doctor answered, looking down. “But I-”

“There’s nothing here for you to eat anyway,” Jamie continued. “Just forget about it. Think about something else. I’m here to keep you safe, right? So-”

“You’re here to answer my questions and give me directions,” the Doctor corrected. “You said that yourself, first day I met you-”

“No, you told me about the first day you met me, and that wasn’t it. I believe you, and I believe what you tell me. Now, Doctor- will you believe me?”

The Doctor blinked. “But you’re…” He didn’t even know which angle he was going for. 

“What you need to do is survive,” Jamie said. “The methods of survival don’t matter as long as you’re doing it, and if you don’t need to eat here, that makes it easier, doesn’t it?”

“But…” He couldn’t think of an argument. “I want to find my ship.” 

“And I looked, and it’s not here. What next?”

“There is no next,” the Doctor said. “I can’t get anywhere without my ship, I can’t- do anything without it. That’s it. And you’re changing, you’re- getting realer, and it’s…” 

“I’m just listening to what you tell me,” Jamie snapped. “And you’re going to have to learn how to live without that ship, because you’re not going to find it here.” 

The Doctor fumed, unable to think of anything else to say. Amy, if she were here, would probably chuck something through Jamie and make him disappear. His hand went to his pockets, but then he remembered he didn’t have anything on him. Along with his ship, everything he’d carried in his pockets had also disappeared when he woke up on the Datasphere. He sighed, and dropped his head into his hands. “I’m too old for this, Jamie, I’m too… old.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t see a way out of this other than giving up, and I…” The Doctor made himself breathe. “There’s not even anyone here to surrender to. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and I don’t- know what I’m going to-” He pushed his hands back into his hair, grabbing onto it. “What is there left to do?”

Jamie just looked at him. 

“Jamie, please.” He felt his eyes fill up with tears, and he hated it, but he was completely lost. “I woke up here the morning after I watched my best friend die. There has to be- a reason for that. It wouldn’t just happen.”

“Who was your friend?”

“Her name was Amy,” the Doctor managed. “She was just- she was- I-” He held a hand to his mouth. “And what is this? The most evil most- hideous dream in the world? What’s the point, Jamie?” He reached out to grab Jamie’s shoulder, and his hand fell to the floor, cutting a line through Jamie’s chest. 

Jamie looked down, watched himself come back together. “I don’t know if there is a point,” he answered, after a minute. “Just get through it.” 

“I’m tired of getting through it.” He said it, and then realized that he’d said it. He froze, and couldn’t make himself look up from the square inch of concrete ground he was staring at. He didn’t want to see how Jamie was looking at him. “Jamie, go away. You’ll answer any questions, I just have to ask, I know, I know, just go.” 

He didn’t move for a minute, until he was absolutely sure that Jamie was gone, and then he looked up. 

The warehouse seemed too empty. 

He leaned back until he was lying on the ground, the concrete cold and hard on the back of his head. He thought about maybe constructing a dialogue in his mind with Amy, but the thought of it made him unbearably sad. He realized, lying there, that he’d never wanted to give up as much as he did right now. Not ever. Even during the war he’d had something - the thought that nothing like that would ever happen again, to anyone else. He’d been wrong, but he’d had that to keep him going. Even after the war, he’d had something. He’d had Rose. 

He rolled over onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chest, deciding he was too tired to cry and refusing to let himself. Instead he ran his hand over the concrete, back and forth, and after a few moments he realized that the palm that had been sliced up on the cables a few days ago was completely smooth and unmarked. No scab, no scar, no anything. 

Nothing made sense. Usually, he could take little pieces of information like this and string them together, fit them in like pieces of a puzzle, and in minutes have the answer. For some reason, he was finding it impossible to do that here. It was all so disgusting - the cables, the oil, the green, the thing in the dark - and there wasn’t a reason for any of it. 

He laid there for hours, refusing to let Amy’s voice enter his mind, actively keeping it out, and when he felt like it was late enough - of course, time was even more relative than usual here; there was no natural light at all - he sat up and told himself that maybe he should stop being miserable, at least outwardly. 

Oh, Jamie! He had to make sure Jamie knew he was doing perfectly fine and okay. The way he’d left it, his mask was maybe slipping a little. Couldn’t have that. 

“Jamie,” he called. “Question.” 

Jamie appeared. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Do you want to sit and talk?” the Doctor offered. He really hoped he didn’t sound desperate. He wasn't desperate. He just- had a point to prove. He just didn’t want Jamie to worry about him. He just… had to uphold an image. Not desperate. 

“Would you like that?”

“Yeah, Jamie, it’s almost like I just asked you to,” he said, and he felt too vulnerable admitting it. 

Jamie laughed. “Alright.” He sat down next to the Doctor. “Actually, I gave some thought to what you said.”

“Which bit?” the Doctor asked cynically, not ready to hear someone attribute the word ‘suicidal’ to him out loud. 

“When you asked me if there was a point,” Jamie replied, “and I said I didn’t know. I went through my complete records bank of stories, because stories are what have points, and I think that if there really is something in the passages, finding out what might be the point. You seem a fan of narratives, Doctor. How about that for a narrative?”

“The thing in the passage…” the Doctor said slowly, thinking. It was watching him. It knew how to find him. If anything, it was messing with him. And out of everything on the Datasphere, that was the only thing with agency besides him and Jamie. It had to be the thing that trapped him here, the thing that’s keeping him here. “Jamie!” he exclaimed. He leaned over and kissed the top of Jamie’s head. It felt like kissing nothing and it disrupted Jamie’s image for a second, but he didn’t care. “Oh, you brilliant thing! That’s it, that has to be it.” 

Jamie was smiling too, and he clasped his hands together. “Good! I thought you’d like that.” 

“I’ll go and look straight away in the morning,” the Doctor continued, laying out a plan more to himself than to Jamie. “I’ll go out and I’ll give it a good talking to so it know if it doesn’t come out and meet me then it’s a coward-” 

Jamie was laughing. 

“-and I’ll go down every passage until I find it, how’s that?” He was absolutely brimming with energy and excitement, and a way to find answers, and a way out. “Hey, don’t laugh at me, it’s a good plan.” 

“I know it’s a good plan,” Jamie replied, still laughing. “I’m laughing because you being happy makes me happy.” 

“Oh.” The Doctor smiled. He could chalk it up to Jamie being here to make sure he was happy, and therefor when he was it was good, or he could chalk it up to the laughter and the smiles just being programmed reactions to things that Jamie really had no opinion on, but he knew that neither of those were true. Jamie was  _ Jamie _ , and he was smiling because he was happy, really, genuinely happy. A thought struck him. “Can’t you be… solid, or something? Just for a second?”

“How do you mean?” Jamie asked, letting his head fall to one side as he looked at the Doctor quizzically. 

“I just thought that maybe I could touch…” The Doctor stopped, realizing he sounded stupid. “Or not, doesn’t matter.” 

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. He looked down at his hands. “I don’t think I can. Wait- try now.” He held out a hand. 

The Doctor went to give him a high five, and, as always, his hand passed right through Jamie’s, which went up in those cubes of holographic light, and reformed after a moment. 

“My apologies,” Jamie said, watching himself come back together. “I wish there something I could do.” 

And that was something- before, Jamie hadn’t wanted anything. Now… There was no way to deny that he was real, and that he was him, and the Doctor felt bad for every time he’d yelled at him out of anger. “It’s fine, Jamie. I’m going to figure it out tomorrow, and we’ll be safe and fine and we can get out of here.”

Jamie nodded. “What about your ship?”

“Once I get an explanation out of that thing,” the Doctor said, “we’ll know where to find it.” He was positive- he’d been through things along these lines so many times before it was almost formulaic. Now that he had grounds to go on, he’d played this scene before. Missing TARDIS, unfamiliar world. Stop the bad guy, find the ship, go on flying. He leaned in close to Jamie. “I’ve done this before, actually. You could probably call me an expert.” 

“It’s good to see you making plans, Doctor,” Jamie replied. “I hate it when you give up.” 

“I do too,” said the Doctor quietly. “Don’t worry, though, we’ll get home soon.” 

Jamie smiled. “Good. And- unless you need anything else-”

“You can go,” the Doctor told him. “You wonderful, magnificent man.” 

“If you have any questions, Doctor,” Jamie said, “you just have to ask.” He shook his head, just slightly, and dissolved into light.

The Doctor tried to get a good night’s sleep that night, he really did, but he was too full of energy to even stay in one place. He went around the warehouse, practicing lines and bits and what he might say to the monster. He envisioned the scenario in his head a hundred different ways, and hyped himself up on the fact that nothing could possibly go wrong. Nothing could possibly go wrong. 

He paced and planned and recited phrases with a hundred different inflections, and smiled at himself, at his brilliance, at the fact that if Amy were here she’d tell him she’d says something like,  _ You go get him, tiger. _ Beat.  _ Or her. We don’t know, maybe it’s a she. _ She’d laugh her signature chuckle deep in her throat, and bump shoulders with him.  _ Monsters can be girls, it’s the twenty- wait. What century are we in? _ And it doesn’t matter what century we’re in, Pond, because we’re not going to be here much longer!

* * *

When he figured a suitable night had passed, he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath and left the warehouse room. He reached the hallway, and stood in the middle of it, flinging out his arms. “I know you’re here somewhere,” he yelled, and this time he wasn’t expecting an echo. He felt powerful, and he felt in control. “We can do this two ways, buddy. Either you can come and get me - which is easy! I’m right here; hello! - or I’ll come and get you. I’m a fair player, I’ll give you a minute to decide.” 

He waited, holding his breath, so excited he could barely keep a smile off his face. 

After a bit of painstaking silence, he yelled, “Good choice! Alright, ready or not, here I come.” 

He strode off down the hallway, and picked a passage at random. He slowed as he stepped into it, and, being in the dark, some of that old fear threatened to grab him. But, no. He had the upper hand. He’d put out a challenge. He was going to get off this planet, and everything was going to be fine. 

He went along it, one hand on the cables to feel out any turns or forks. He’d been going for minutes, at least, and there was no hint of anything besides him in the passage. It didn’t add up. The thing had been there both of the other times he’d gone down these passages. It was probably just messing with him. Trying to get into his head. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he murmured, wishing he could see a little better but having too much pride to ask for Jamie. In a way, he was showing off for Jamie by doing this. It would be counterintuitive to need help. And he didn’t need help, anyway. Him? Need help? You must’ve got the wrong guy. 

His thoughts trailed off as the passage took a sharp turn, and, looking behind him, he realized he couldn’t see the green glow of the hallway anymore. He didn’t know which way he was facing, he had no idea where he was in relation to getting out. Because the silence was getting tense, he told the dark, “Now’s as good a time as any, and you’ve got the high ground here…”

There was a crackle then, like a static electric shock but amplified as if the entire Datasphere were a speaker. 

Involuntarily, he flinched at the sound, and that let the fear in. 

Again, coming from everywhere, a voice clearly generated by a computer said, “Can you hear me now?”

He leaned back against the wall of the passage, the uneven bundles of cables pressed against his spine. Deep, slow breaths, he told himself, and then his body chucked that sentiment out the window, deciding that if he was going to panic, his lungs were going to as well. “Hello?” he managed. 

“Finally.” This computer voice was not as real or smooth as a computer voice should be at a time when planets like the Datasphere existed, and the outdatedness of it struck another layer of fear into him for no other reason than it just shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t be. 

“Finally?” he repeated tentatively, hearts thundering in his chest. 

“I’ve been trying to get through to you forever,” said the voice. It was low, monotonous, grating, and the way it went through words made it clear that the coding telling it where to put emphasis had more than a few bugs. “I deleted the nightmare program.” 

“The what?” The words clung to him, and a jolt went down his spine. 

“The nightmare program,” the computer voice said. “There was something frightening, wasn’t there.”

“Yes-” He thought about maybe processing the conversation rationally, and decided to forgo that and answer any questions the voice had. “Yes, there was. What was it?”

“It was nothing.” 

“No, it wasn’t nothing, just- I won’t tell anybody, I promise, just tell me what it was,” he begged. “I need to know, I’ve been thinking about it for weeks-”

“It was nothing. There was nothing there. It was a program made to scare you.” 

“A- a program? What are you- who are you?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

“I’m Doctor Smith.” 

The Doctor’s hearts skipped a beat. “No you’re not…” he said slowly. “Because I’m Doctor Smith, and… who are you really?”

“I told you. I’m Doctor Smith. You’re going to have to trust me, I’m going to get you out of there.” 

“No,” he said, and cutting through the fear was anger. “No, I was going to get me out of here, before you came in and- and fucked it all up! That thing - and it was real, I know it was real - that thing was going to tell me why it trapped me here, and I’d figure out-”

“It wasn’t real. None of what you’re seeing is real. I know it looks real, and it feels real, but you’re going to have to believe me.” 

“Why? You’re just a- a voice, and not even a real voice,” the Doctor yelled into the dark, feeling sick. “You’re what’s not real, not the planet. This- this is real, I’ve been here for weeks-”

“Please- please calm down, just-”

“And why are you using my name? Why are you using my name?” He realized he’d stepped away from the wall, and that he had no idea which way was out. Didn’t matter. He’d figure it out later, when this was settled. 

“It’s not your name, it’s my name.” 

“But-”

“Don’t fight me on this, please. I can’t give you more than that or they’ll find me.”

“They? Who’s they?”

“The people who are making you see all this and think it’s-”

“Jamie!” he called. “Jamie, I’ve got a question, what the hell is going on?”

Silence. 

Then, the computer voice, “Who are you talking to?”

The Doctor swallowed, taking a step back. If Jamie wasn’t answering, then he was gone, and if Jamie was gone then there was no way out of the passage and back to the warehouse. More importantly, he’d have lost Jamie. Again. “Jamie?”

“Please, you need to listen to me-”

“Shut up!” he snapped. “Whoever you are, shut up. Jamie, please-”

“Doctor! I’m sorry,” Jamie’s voice came from somewhere that seemed nearby. “There’s something in the system. It’s making it difficult for me. I apologize for any delays.” 

The tunnel lit up a bit, slowly, and the Doctor could make Jamie out, standing close but not close enough. He looked worried. 

“Jamie,” the Doctor said. 

“Doctor.” Jamie’s face snapped into a smile. 

“What’s going on?”

“There’s a foreign influence in the system, I’m working on it,” Jamie replied. “Not to worry.” 

“Who is it?” the Doctor whispered, going over to him. 

Jamie shrugged. “They’re very smart, I can’t trace it or anything. I think we’d better go back, Doctor.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the computer voice said. “Doctor, wake up.” 

Those words, for whatever reason, felt like a punch to the chest. For just a second, he felt as if he were falling backwards, and then he pulled back to himself. 

“You’re alone,” the computer grated along. “There’s no one else, there’s no Jamie.” 

“No,” the Doctor said. “You’re wrong, you’re- he’s right here. Can’t you see him?” 

“You’re lying there alone. That’s what I see.” 

The Doctor felt cold. “Jamie, take me back home.”

“Home-”

“The warehouse room. Now.” He followed Jamie down the passage, feeling utterly disoriented, almost dizzy. 

He could hear the voice behind him drawling his name in that technological voice, begging him not to walk away, to come back, to listen. 

He didn’t even slow down. He followed Jamie all the way back to the warehouse in an unsettled silence, and when they got back, he asked, “Foreign influence, you said? Can you trace it?”

“I believe it was coming from a private computer,” Jamie answered. “Speaking, it seems, to you. Text to voice, which is standard for relaying messages to nonvisual receptors. I don’t know how they got in.” 

“They said their name was my name,” the Doctor said slowly. “And they said- Jamie, they said the thing in the passage was a program.” 

“A program?” Jamie tipped his head to the side. “I don’t understand.” 

“I’m not sure I do either.” The Doctor realized that he was scared, and not just the kind of blind panic he felt when he was down the tunnel. No, he was genuinely scared now, even after thinking about things critically. He knew that this was real. He knew it. He’d felt things, he’d seen things. He’d been in pain. That wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t real. And Jamie? Jamie couldn’t not be real. “Jamie, what do I do?”

“Don’t worry.” Jamie gave him a smile. “I’m sure everything will be fine. I’ll look after you.” 

The Doctor went to put a hand to the side of Jamie’s face, and Jamie took a quick step out of his reach before he could touch him. 

“I’m going to see what I can do to stop that from happening again, Doctor,” Jamie said. “If you need anything, just say so and I’ll come straight back.” He broke up in his normal holographic fashion and disappeared. 

The Doctor knelt down and ran his hands over the concrete. It felt real. The little bumps just sharp enough to scratch at his fingertips, those were real. He ran through it in his head. What I’m feeling is real. What I’m hearing is real. What I’m seeing is real. 

“Doctor.” 

He almost jumped out of his skin. “Doctor Smith?”

“You need to listen to me. I don’t know if I have a lot of time to tell you this.” 

“You’re a liar,” he said firmly. 

“Oh, that is so you. Will you listen to what I tell you for once in your life? There are some things that you don’t know best on.”

He stood up, and realized that there was no harm in letting Doctor Smith say what they had to say. He’d listen, and then he’d ignore it, and maybe they’d go away. “Alright,” he called out, not knowing in which direction to speak. “Hit me, then.” 

“I know you. And you know me. Very well, actually,” Doctor Smith said, the computer system reading out lines in that horrible voice. “I can’t tell you more, I know they’re trying to stop me, but you have got to get out of there.” 

“Why?” he asked, not planning on trusting the answer. 

“Because someone with a lot of money who knows you have a lot of information put you in there so you’d give it up.”

That wasn’t what he was expecting at all. He rubbed his chin, thinking about it. “And where is there, exactly? Here, I mean?”

“It’s a simulation,” Doctor Smith answered. 

“Oh.” The Doctor chuckled, assured once again that Doctor Smith was spouting nonsense. “Then how is it that when I cut my hand, I could feel it hurting?”

“When did you feel it?”

“When I cut it,” he answered surely. 

“Are you positive? Think about it.” 

“Yes, of course I’m positive,” he muttered, still laughing. This whole thing was honestly ridiculous, because he’d cut his hand on the cables in the passage and then it had started to hurt- he stopped, feeling cold. It had started to hurt only once he looked at it. “Actually… actually, hang on.” 

“Yeah,” Doctor Smith said. “I thought so. And the nightmare- I mean, the monster in the tunnels? You never saw it, did you?”

“Well, no, but…” the Doctor ran through the recollections in his mind, trying to find anything that would assure him that something was really there. “I heard it.” 

“Right, but can’t that be suggested? Just like everything else here?”

“But… it’s a data storing planet, it was commissioned by the Shadow Proclamation. It’s not made up.” The Doctor touched a hand to his forehead. 

“The Shadow Proclamation aren’t as widely known as you think they are,” Doctor Smith said. “It’s not a coincidence that you were told the planet was created by something you know. Something familiar to you. It had to fit into the story.” 

The Doctor looked around. The room was there, right in front of him, as irrevocably real as anything. Doctor Smith was nothing, just a voice, disembodied, and not even a living voice. They didn’t even have their own name. Really, if they were trying to be convincing, they’d have thought up something original. “You’re lying.” 

“Please,” Doctor Smith grated out. “Please listen to me. I know I had you there for a minute, just- you have to believe me. When they have what they want from you, they’ll kill you.”

The Doctor swallowed. “Say I do go along with whatever you’re trying to tell me. What would you do?”

“We’d shut down the simulation. All we need is a code from inside. You’d have to get that to me. Then you’d wake up back in the real world, we’d come get you - we already have a fix on your location - and it’d all be over.”

“What about Jamie?” the Doctor asked slowly. 

“There is no Jamie.” 

“If you shut this down you’d kill him,” the Doctor said it as he realized it. Even though Jamie was really Jamie, he was still tied to this place. “You’d kill Jamie! You can’t-”

“Doctor, listen to me-”

“Get out!” he yelled at an empty room, and he was glad no one was here to see it. 

“You know it doesn’t make sense,” Doctor Smith said. “It can’t make sense. You’re so clever, you must’ve realized it.” 

“I won’t let you hurt Jamie,” the Doctor murmured. “You don’t understand, I’ve let people hurt him before. I can’t do it again.”

“He isn’t real. And I know it’s a lot, and I know that it’s awful, but I’ve gone through hell for you, and you should at least trust me enough to walk through some fire.” 

“Who are you?” he demanded. 

“Just trust me,” the automated voice pleaded blankly. “Just… trust me.” 

“I can’t,” the Doctor said, and suddenly everything crashed into him at once. The Datasphere had never made any sense. He didn’t have to eat, his wound had only hurt when he was looking at it and even then had disappeared without scarring far too soon, he’d only ever heard the thing in the passage, never seen it beyond the blinking of a light, which could be chalked up just to that- the blinking of a light. Every single thing was seemingly pointing to, just as Doctor Smith had said, a simulated reality. He thought about it, considered it, turned it over in his mind, and then carefully, quietly, he said, “I cannot let you shut it down, I cannot lose him.”

“Doctor-”

“You don’t understand,” he cried, looking up at no one. “The day before I came here, Amy-” His throat closed up. “She was my best friend,” he choked out. “She was my best friend and they took her from me and they- I did everything! I did everything right!” His voice broke. “I tried as hard as I could and I still lost her, how- how is that fair?”

“It’s not, and I’m sorry, but-”

“And Rory, and he’s never done anything but help, he- he only ever wanted to help people,” the Doctor continued, tears gathering in his eyes. “And I tried! I tried so, so hard, and there was nothing I could do. And-” His voice was raw, but he couldn’t stop himself as he started yelling. “And this always happens! It always happens, Doctor! I do everything I can, and they all still get taken from me. I can’t lose anyone else, I just- can’t.” 

“You are going to die here,” Doctor Smith said slowly. “And there are plenty of us still out here that love you, and we’re right here. We’re right here, Doctor. Just get me that code. Just wake up.”

He took a step back, clenching his jaw and pressing his lips together to keep his face from contorting with sobs. “But- Jamie-” He gasped involuntarily, holding his hands over his eyes and doubling over. It was too much, it was too much, it was too much.

“I made a promise.” Doctor Smith’s voice stuttered to a halt, then picked back up. “I made a promise a long time ago, right after I got married. I promised myself that I’d find a way to pay you back for saving my life. We know you were there; we saw you. Don’t you dare make me break that promise, Doctor.” 

He wiped his face, trying to catch his breath. “But I can’t kill him, I can’t-”

“It’s not him.” 

“I don’t care,” he yelled. “It’s someone!” 

“Put me through.” Doctor Smith paused for a considerable bit of time before saying, in that hideous automated voice, “I don’t care, put me through.”

The Doctor didn’t know what they meant, not sure of what he could do. “I-”

“Doctor.” And this time, it wasn’t a computer voice. It was a real voice, and a voice he knew, and a voice he loved, sounding through some hidden, omnipresent speaker. “Can you hear me?”

“Martha,” he said, holding his hands out as if she were there. Hearing her voice was like finally being able to get a breath of air after being held underwater for years. He hadn’t even realized how different from a real, human voice Jamie’s was. He nearly started crying again.

“Since I made a direct connection, they’ll be able to trace me,” Martha said. “I’ve got maybe minutes, and you need to listen to me. Don’t interrupt, don’t talk over me, just- listen. I’ll tell you a story. I think I’ve got enough practice at that to make it good, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for a response. “The first time I went into surgery, I was just assisting. I held some clamps, I passed over some gauze. That’s it. The head surgeon was really great, not the bloke you had to deal with the day we first met. She was really, really brilliant. Best doctor we had on staff. The patient was a man, mid thirties, some of his vertebrae had been crushed in a car accident. It was bad, but the surgery wasn’t really difficult. That man died in the OR. Right on the table, right in front of us. Every single one of us did everything we could, there had just been a tear in an artery we hadn’t caught. It’s like you said, it wasn’t fair. The surgeon noted time of death and went out to tell the family, and in an hour she was back for another surgery because-” Her voice was getting tight. “-being a doctor isn’t about walking away, or giving up. It’s about trying, and losing people even when you do everything right, and still walking into the OR the next day. It’s about remembering the people you couldn’t save, but not letting them stop you from saving everyone else. It’s hard, but you have to come back. And all I’m asking of you - all I’m asking - is that you be a doctor.” 

He stared up, wishing he could see her, wishing he had something to focus on. He felt like all the wind had been knocked clean out of him. 

_ Listen to her. Come on!  _ He could almost see Amy, and she was smiling and the sun looked beautiful in her hair and she leaned in closer to him.  _ Be a doctor, Doctor. _

He cleared his throat. “Jamie, I have a question.” 

Jamie appeared, and he smiled. “I’m a little busy right now, but for you, Doctor? Anything.” 

“I’m sure I forgot to say it when it counted,” the Doctor said putting his hands into his pockets, “but you were the best companion anyone could’ve asked for.” He tried to memorize everything, the creases in Jamie’s shirt, the slight wave in his hair, the colors of his plaid. 

Jamie laughed. “That’s not a question, Doctor.” 

“There’s a code that’ll destroy this simulation,” the Doctor continued, sniffing. “Could you give it to me?”

“Well, I have to.” Jamie’s smile faded. “You asked for it. Oh four six epsilon five nine delta four.” 

The Doctor repeated the sequence aloud, and then called, “Did you get that, Martha?”

“Copy, Doctor.” He could hear the hope in her voice. “You have twenty-five seconds, then you’re back with us.” 

“Jamie,” he said, talking fast. “What did you want?

“I want to make you happy,” Jamie replied, a touch of confusion in his voice. He flickered. 

“No, no no no- what did they tell you to get, what were you- what were you programmed to get from me?” the Doctor pressed. 

Around them, the warehouse room was coming apart in cubes, much like Jamie when he disappeared back into the computer. 

“I don’t-”

“Jamie, tell me. There must’ve been something you were programmed to-” He stopped, thinking back to the only time Jamie had ever pursued a topic on his own. “The Chameleon Arch. That must’ve been it. Was that it?”

“Yes.” Jamie’s face was devoid of expression. 

“Why?”

“Doctor, they don’t tell me those things.” And there was that smile; there was Jamie. “I’m a string of code.”

“Jamie-”

“Take care, Doctor.” Jamie flickered again, violently, and went out like a candle. 

The warehouse was gone, and the last few cubes were coming apart and disappearing. He watched the one under his feet go, and then he was falling through nothing. 

* * *

The Doctor opened his eyes with a gasp, sitting up in bed. Not his bed, and, as he took in where he was, not his room either. It was white. Sterilely so. His sheets were a dull greyish blue, and he was only wearing his undershirt and pants. Coming out of his arm at the inner elbow was a thick clear tube filled with liquid that could’ve been water. Maybe it was. 

His head ached, and he raised a hand to his temple and found an electrode stuck to his skin. He pulled it off, and then he pulled the rest of them off as well. He’d just gotten the last one when the door at the far end of the room slammed open. 

On instinct, he pushed himself back against his pillows and the wall. 

“They’ve got cams all over this place,” the man who’d kicked in the door said. “Martha’s waiting outside in the van but they’re going to be here any minute. We need to go. Now.” 

“Mickey!” the Doctor exclaimed. And he was taken aback by how strange it was to physically vocalize something. He’d been thinking his words for the past who knew how long. To actually have them in his mouth felt foreign. “I never thought I’d-”

“We can do this in the van, come on,” Mickey told him. 

The Doctor nodded, and looked away as he pulled the IV out of his arm. He got out of bed, and realized he had no shoes. Didn’t matter, he figured. Not the time. He took a few steps and found it hard to make himself walk. His body was tired. Very tired. 

Mickey got an arm around him and tugged him along, and he realized just how long it had been since he’d actually touched another living thing. Together they went through a series of short, clinical looking corridors, and out a set of double doors. 

It was nighttime. The stars told him they were on Earth, but a future Earth. 

Mickey dragged him across the parking lot to a black van, and helped him into the back. Before the doors even closed, they were moving. 

The Doctor sat in the back of the van, and was jostled for a few moments as Martha pulled out of the parking lot. Then, having turned onto some type of highway or byway, if they had those in this future, they seemed to glide along. It felt like a dream. 

“Thank you,” he finally said, when he felt present in his own body, and able to talk and feel like he was actually saying the words. “Thank you so much, I can’t- thank you enough. And it’s brilliant to see you two again, you look… amazing.”

“You look different,” Mickey replied. “I like the hair, though.”

“It’s good to see you safe,” was what Martha said from the driver’s seat. She made eye contact with him, just for a moment, in the rear view mirror. 

There was another bout of silence, and the sides of the road sped by as they went on. The energy in the van was heavy, and solemn. It almost had a sort of sanctity to it. 

“How did you find me?” the Doctor finally asked, and he was still getting used to seeing real things again. 

“Last time you thought you weren’t going to be coming back, you put coordinates into the TARDIS. A final place, you know,” Martha said. Her voice was full of emotion, but exactly which one was unreadable. “Do you remember where you told it to go?”

“I’m sorry, I…” He thought. “I’m afraid you might have to remind me.” 

“I don’t blame you.” Martha looked up at him again in the rear view. She looked older, and so beautiful. “I know you don’t know anything about actual medicine, but your brain has been under constant and direct external electrical stimulation for weeks. That’ll take it out of you.” She sighed. “It was right down the street from Jackie’s old place.”

“Remember?” Mickey jumped in. “You were facing death or something out on some satellite in space and you put Rose in the ship alone and sent her home. Not that she stayed, but… it went back there. I was around visiting old mates at the shop and I heard the engines or whatever it is that makes that noise. Nearly hopped out of my skin. It’s been a while, you know?”

“I do know,” the Doctor agreed quietly, a slight smile on his lips. 

“Rang Martha up and we checked it out. We realized you weren’t there,” Mickey continued, “and that you were probably in trouble, because the ship had one of those emergency protocols up playing. I traced the ship’s flight path-”

“Sorry,” the Doctor interrupted. “You what?”

Mickey grinned. “Remember, I was hacking United Nations missile codes when I was twenty-two. You think the TARDIS is going to give me trouble now?”

“You’re brilliant,” the Doctor murmured. “Stone brilliant.” 

“Anyway,” Mickey continued, but he had this proud smile on, “Found your location and timestamp, I sent it over to Martha, and she grabbed this from Jack.” Mickey showed him a leather wristband with a mechanical device inlaid through it. “Vortex thing.” 

“Manipulator,” Martha corrected. “Vortex manipulator. We got to your time, and we tried to get into the simulation they had you in. It took… a while, and I’m sorry.” 

The Doctor shivered, and wished for his jacket. “You gave it your all,” he said slowly. “And I’m fine. Better than ever. Thanks to you.” He smiled at her in the mirror, and caught her eye. 

She just looked sad. 

Time wore on, and they kept driving. Mickey unzipped his coat and wrapped it around the Doctor’s shoulders, and a moment later just sat next to him and put an arm around him. “You can go to sleep,” he told him. “We’ll wake you up before we make the jump back to 2012.” 

The Doctor nodded, and mumbled, “Thanks,” before letting himself drift off. Compared to how difficult it had been to sleep on the Datasphere, it shocked him, almost, that here in the van he was out in minutes. 

He slept lightly, and would occasionally be half woken by a turn or a bump in the road, and would hear Martha in Mickey in hushed conversation but not be conscious enough to make out words. Their voices would lull him back to sleep until the next pothole. 

Eventually, he was shaken gently, and he woke back up. There were strains of light coming in through the shaded windows of the van. 

“We’re going,” Martha told him. She was kneeling down next to him; they’d stopped moving. She took his hand, and Mickey did as well. 

“Wait-” He tried to pull his hand away, and panic seized him. “Who are they? Who did that? Do you know?”

“I’ll tell you everything we know, we just need to get back home first,” Martha promised. She looked over to Mickey. “Ready?”

He nodded.

She hit something on the vortex manipulator secured around her wrist, and the three of them were thrown through time together. 

When they were dropped back into a solid era, the Doctor realized how manufactured the pain he’d felt on the Datasphere had been. Actually feeling pain, actually getting hurt, was so different, and so real he didn’t know how he’d ever tricked himself into thinking his hand had been cut. Vortex manipulators always hurt, but this felt worse than usual. 

It was nighttime again. Time travel. Strange. 

They didn’t talk as they went. The Doctor didn’t even ask where they were going; he trusted Martha to lead him somewhere safe. They went down increasingly normal, increasingly suburban streets until she led him across a yard and up a set of stairs to a regular door. 

Inside, there were a few lights on. Tish, Martha’s sister, sat on the couch, and when they came in she got up and went over, pulling Martha into a hug. 

“How is she, is she asleep?” Martha asked immediately. 

“Yeah, since eight,” Tish answered, letting go of Martha to look her over for a second and then hugging her again. 

“How long were we gone, Tee?” Mickey asked, going over and giving Tish a kiss on the cheek. 

“Just since this morning,” Tish replied. “How long’s it been for you?”

Martha shook her head. “Remember the Doctor?” She gestured back towards him. 

“Wait- but- he’s…” Tish squinted at him. “He’s shorter, for one.”

“Thanks,” the Doctor murmured. “I’m not human, remember? I can change, it’s nothing to fuss about.” 

Tish smiled at him. “Weird. Hey, I’m going to head home. Call if you need anything.” 

“Course. You too.” Martha watched her go to the door. “Thank you, Tish.” 

“Right. You have a good night.” Tish left, shooting one last glance at the Doctor and shaking her head. 

Martha was watching him too, and after a moment went over to him and took his hand. She brought him over to the couch, and they sat. 

“I’ll go up and check on her,” Mickey announced. “And I should call Jack as well, tell him he’ll get his vortex thing back safe and sound.” He put a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder and kissed the top of Martha’s head before going up the stairs. 

“You know,” the Doctor said, once he’d gone, “there’s still one thing I don’t understand. When I first woke up on the- in the simulation, I felt something real, and it had effects, and I was- dehydrated. How could I have…” He pieced it together and sighed, answering his own question. “I must not’ve had the IV in yet. Right.” He’d almost wished he could find something real about it, and was struck with a sudden, heartbreaking disappointment, which disgusted him. 

“Right,” Martha echoed. 

They sat side by side together for a while, still holding hands, not speaking. The Doctor soaked up how rich reality was, and then, finally, he asked, “Who was it?”

Martha sighed. “We don’t know a lot. They were human. Rich. Whatever they thought they’d get out of you, they were already marketing it as some sort of longevity treatment. People will do anything for more money, it’s…”

“It was the Chameleon Arch,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Remember when you were with me, and I used it to-”

“Yes.” 

“If you could change your biology, make yourself something that lived longer…” He tried to process it, and it make him feel nauseous. “It really was for no reason, then. I don’t-” He touched a hand to his temple. “I’ve been doing this for a thousand years, Martha, and I should get it by now, and I don’t.” 

Martha ran her thumb back and forth over his hand, and she nodded. “When you were in there you told me I’d kill Jamie,” she said, after a minute. “There was no one else-”

“I know,” he said quietly. “I know, it wasn’t even- it wasn’t even him. It was the interface. For the simulation. At first it just looked like him - an old friend of mine - to be familiar, or something, but then it…” He couldn’t think about it without wanting to hide alone for a long time. He felt so, so stupid. “It looked like him. And it was so hard to remember that it wasn’t him, because he was all I had there. It was just me and him. If I wanted to talk, it was to him or to no one, and he was able to save me from that… nightmare program. And I told him more about my Jamie and he must have… saved it, or logged it, or whatever computers do because he started acting like it had been him. And I…” He waved a hand, trying to tell Martha without saying it. He had to, though. “I believed him.”

Martha was just watching him, and she still looked more sad than anything. 

“Towards the end there we’d both tricked ourselves into thinking he was real,” the Doctor continued, and he laughed, shortly and quietly. “I actually- believed that I was going to find my ship and fly off with him again, just like…” He shook his head, and words felt too heavy to say. “Everybody makes mistakes, I suppose.” 

“I need you to know,” Martha said quietly, “that a lot of things are your fault - really, a lot - and this is not one of them.” 

“But I…” He should’ve been able to get out on his own. He shouldn’t have fallen for it. He shouldn’t have been scared by the program. He shouldn’t have tried to defend Jamie. He shouldn’t have needed help. He could have been better. He could have been smarter. He could have done more. It was his fault. 

“No, I’m not going to listen to that,” Martha said. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. When you were in there, you told me you tried your best, and you know what? You tried your best. And, hey.” She nudged him gently. “It was enough. You’re here. You’re fine.”

He didn’t know what to say, and he nodded. He tried to think that - that it wasn’t his fault - and it brought tears to his eyes. He leaned his head on Martha’s shoulder for a second. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Come on. I owed you. The Sontaran, remember?” Martha chuckled a little. “Don’t think we didn’t see you. Thanks for that, by the way.” 

He shook his head. “You don’t go through time and nearly get caught because you owe someone, Martha, that’s not how things go,” he said. 

“We also love you, of course. Mickey wasn’t able to stay here knowing you needed our help somewhere else,” Martha replied. “Neither was I. It was that, and it was that I don’t want my daughter seeing her mum as someone who walks away from a friend who needs her.” 

“Daughter?” the Doctor repeated softly. His chest felt warm. 

“Yeah. You can meet her in the morning, I’m not waking her up now,” Martha said, and she was failing to hide a smile. “She’s going to be six in a few months.”

“What’s her name?” he asked, and he felt like an idiot a thousand times over for ever having thought he could walk away from saving a world like this one. 

“Rita-Anne,” Martha answered. “She’s… she’s actually everything, you know? It’s like, you grow up and you think you know the world and you think you’ve got all your priorities sorted out, and then you’ve got this little girl to hold and to take care of and everything just… changes. And everything clicks.” She shook her head. “It’s silly, but it’s…”

“No,” he said, and for the first time in years he remembered the exact moment when he first held Susan. “I’ve never heard someone say it better than you.”

She looked down, still smiling. 

“Can I thank you again?”

“Alright.”

“Thank you.” 

She met his eyes. 

“Really. Thank you, Martha. You saved my life. Again.” 

“I’m never going to walk away when someone needs help, even if that someone’s you,” she said, grinning, and she laughed under her breath. “I’m a doctor too, remember?”

He smiled, and couldn’t help but feel endlessly in awe and proud of her. “How could I forget?”

They sat together, hand in hand, in silence. He realized that while he could lose people - while he would undoubtedly, unquestionably lose people - he wouldn’t be alone. There was always someone. And that was comforting beyond belief. He accepted that even though the Datasphere wasn’t real, he’d never be able to chalk it all up to simulation. What he’d gone through was real. The fear he’d felt in those passages was real, and so was the joy, when Jamie smiled at him. And it was alright. It was fine. Just another strange thing he had to endure. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. He made a mental note to go back to New York when he got to his ship, because if he had to keep going on - and he did, people needed him - there was no reason why Amy and Rory’s headstone should ever go without fresh flowers. He took a deep breath. He let Martha’s hand in his ground him. And he waited for a real sun to rise. 

**Author's Note:**

> just some notes-  
\- martha and mickey's daughter is named after mickey's grandmother :')  
\- originally the doctor in this fic was gonna be 12 as it is sort of a different take on heaven sent in a way but 11 right after losing amy and rory was the perfect amount of emotionally vulnerable to subject to this and also his voice is so great i love writing him  
\- jamie's "i'll look after you" is from the war games(s6 serial 7) where he says "if you're going to be in trouble you'll need me to look after you" and i love him so much  
\- title is the title of [a kate bush song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B16RgN8-E28) about being stuck in a place and needing to accomplish some great hurdle to get out and move past it so uh... hittin the nail right on the head  
\- huge thank you to archer, whenever you read this here, for reading it before it was edited <3
> 
> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !!


End file.
